Commentaria in Exodum
Mystically, the court signified the faithful who are beginning to serve God, the Holy Place those who are advancing, the Holy of Holies the perfect and blessed: whence in the court was the laver, that is, penance, and the altar of holocaust, that is, the mortification of vices. So Bede. See what was said chap. 26, verse 4. This court, then, is the stadium and the study of virtue. “In this life,” says St. Augustine, epist. to Macedonius, “virtue is nothing else than to love what ought to be loved: to choose that is prudence; to be turned from it by no troubles is fortitude; by no allurements, temperance; by no pride, justice.” And St. Ambrose on Psalm 118: “There is no virtue,” he says, “without labour, because labour is the advance of virtue.”
The spur is that which Seneca gives: “There is one thing, virtue, which can endow us with immortality and make us equal to the gods.” The reward of virtue, therefore, is the happy life: and that no one can be made happy without virtue the Stoics taught. Whence Horace, book Virtue, knowing no sordid repulse, shines with unsullied honours.
Virtue, opening heaven to those who deserve not to die, attempts the way by a path denied to others.
And Ovid, book 4 of the Tristia, elegy 3:
Fill with sad matter your virtues; arduous glory goes by a steep way. Who would have known Hector, had Troy been fortunate? The way of virtue is made public through misfortunes.
The way to virtue is exercise. Whence Hesiod:
Before virtue the gods have set sweat:
long and steep is the way to it, and rough at first;
but when you have reached the summit, it will thereafter be easy.
And Aristotle, Ethics book 2, chap. 1: “Neither by nature,” he says, “nor contrary to nature are the virtues in us; but we are born fit to receive them, and are perfected by habit;” and chap. 3: “All moral virtue is concerned with pleasures and pains,” the latter to be endured, the former to be moderated. And book 1, chap. 10: “In no mortal affair,” he says, “is there such firmness as in those things which are done according to virtue: for they are much firmer and more stable than the sciences themselves; and the more excellent each is, the more stable it is.”
It is the saying of Pythagoras: “We must choose the best life, which habit itself will soon make pleasant. Riches are a weak anchor, glory weaker still, the body likewise, magistracy, honours: all these are feeble and destitute of strength. What anchors, then, are firm? Prudence, magnanimity, fortitude; no tempest shakes them. This is the law of God, that virtue alone is powerful and solid: all else is trifles and folly.” Tacitus, book 4 of the Annals: “Virtue,” he says, “is man’s own good.” Curtius, book 7: “Nature,” he says, “has set nothing so high that virtue cannot climb to it.” It is the doctrine of the Stoics, “that nothing is to be sought but virtue, nothing to be shunned but vice.”
Theodota the courtesan, insulting Socrates, said: “I far surpass you. For though you cannot draw away any of mine from me, I, when I please, call all of yours to me.” To whom Socrates: “It is no wonder: for you draw all down a gentle slope, but I compel them to virtue, to which the ascent is steep and to most men unaccustomed.”
Thomas More made the same answer to Luther, when he boasted of the multitude of his followers.
Antisthenes used to say that virtue is a matter of deeds, not of words.
Virtue, says Cicero, is named from vir, man; a manly spirit, therefore, becomes men and virtue.
Agapetus the Deacon, in Justinian: As those, he says, who have begun to climb a ladder do not cease from ascending until they have reached the topmost rung, so the zealous lover of virtue will always strive to climb higher.
Philo, book On the Planting of Noe: As the rising sun, he says, illumines the whole heaven with its rays, so also the virtues, with their rays, when they have penetrated the whole mind of man, make it most bright. The same, book 1 of the Allegories: As in an animal, he says, the first part is the head, the second the breast, the third the loins; and in the soul the first part is the rational, the second the irascible, the third the concupiscible: so the first of the virtues is prudence, which directs the head and reason; the second, fortitude, which composes anger and steadies the breast; the third, temperance, which is occupied about the loins and the concupiscible part.
So much the Gentiles and Jews say of moral and natural virtue; what will the Christian now say of divine and supernatural virtue, which is the work of the grace of God? for without this no one can tend to the Holy of Holies in heaven.
Let us now come to the text, and explain the difficulties which occur in the letter.
HANGINGS.—So they are commonly called here, being veils or curtains with which this court was covered all around. Whence the Septuagint render them curtains.
10. AND TWENTY PILLARS WITH AS MANY BASES OF BRASS.—In Hebrew: and twenty pillars, and twenty bases of brass, thou shalt make. For the pillars of the court were not of wood, but of brass, as were the bases. Whence no other material of them is expressed here than brass; but in the pillars of the tabernacle another material is expressed, namely setim wood, as is plain chap. 26, verses 32 and 37. Moreover, that the pillars of the court were of brass, not of wood, our Interpreter expressly teaches in the making of the tabernacle, chap. 38, verses 10 and 12. Philo is mistaken, therefore, who says that these pillars were made of cedar, and likewise asserts that the boards of the tabernacle were made of cedar: for he thinks setim to be cedar.
As, therefore, between the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies there were four pillars of setim wood overlaid with gold, supporting the veil which covered the Holy of Holies; and again, as at the entrance of the Holy Place or tabernacle there were five like pillars, supporting the veil of the tabernacle; so round about the tabernacle and the court sixty brazen pillars are here commanded to be made, namely twenty on the south side, twenty on the north, ten on the west, and ten on the east, from which the hangings should be hung, which should surround and fence in the court like walls.
WHOSE CAPITALS WITH THEIR ENGRAVINGS SHALL BE OF SILVER.—Hebrew and Chaldee: the capitals of the pillars shall be silver, with their girdles, or rings, which are drawn round the pillars with silver threads: for the Hebrew vau signifies a headed nail, or the head of a nail; whence also it gave its name to the letter vau. Nor does the Septuagint oppose, which renders: “and their circles, and their rounded heads, shall be overlaid with silver”; which the Complutensian Bible renders, strangely, “and their clasps, and their tongs, shall be silvered with silver”: for the Greek kuklos is a circle, which our Interpreter calls an engraving; and the Greek word in Vitruvius means projecting or pedimented stones, or that which projects in a vault or house, from which similar form of projection the Septuagint call the capitals of the pillars. So I render the Septuagint, “and the circles of the pillars, and their projecting capitals, shall be silvered with silver,” which is the same as what the Hebrew, Chaldee and our version have. These engravings, therefore, were not cuttings or carvings, but thin plates, or threads surrounding and encircling both the capitals of the pillars and their shafts and bases; for this the Greek signifies, and the Hebrew chashukim, as is plain from chap. 38, verse 10.
11. IN LIKE MANNER ON THE NORTH SIDE (which is the side of the length of the court, as the south side opposite to it) THERE SHALL BE HANGINGS (of fine linen) OF A HUNDRED CUBITS IN LENGTH.—For the length of the court was a hundred cubits: whence its hangings were stretched 100 cubits in length, on the south as well as the north. For on that side was seen its length, as its breadth was seen from the east and west; the court therefore was quadrangular: for its length was double its breadth. It was 100 cubits long, and 50 broad. Josephus asserts that the tabernacle was placed in the middle of the court, which some understand precisely of the geometrical middle, and consequently think that the tabernacle had in its length before it, namely to the east, 35 cubits of the court, and behind it to the west as many cubits of the court: for twice 35 make 70, which added to 30 cubits, the length of the tabernacle itself, make 100 cubits, the length of the whole court.
But because the 35 cubits behind the tabernacle would have been almost useless, and would have been taken from the space in front of the court, where the people for the most part gathered for the sacred rites and sacrifices which were performed before the tabernacle in this front or eastern part of the court (for a space of 35 cubits could not hold so great a people), it is more likely, as Philo, Abulensis and others say, that the tabernacle stood at equal distances from three parts of the court, namely from the two sides of the court, and from the rear. That space was 20 cubits; therefore on the front side the tabernacle had before it a court of not 35 but 50 cubits, which held a vast people. Add to these 50 cubits of the court the 30 cubits of the length of the tabernacle itself, and finally the 20 cubits of the court behind the tabernacle, and you will complete a hundred cubits, which was the length of the whole court.